Sunil Gavaskar wants selectors to drop average fielders from the Indian team immediately. Writing in his Sportstar column on July 27, the former India captain said there is no excuse for carrying players who cannot field at the international level.
“It’s mandatory that if a player is an average fielder, he has to be shown the door. There is simply no way a captain has to hide three or four players, hoping the ball won’t go anywhere near them.”
Sunil Gavaskar, Sportstar column, July 27, 2026
The statement lands at a point where the numbers make the problem impossible to ignore. India have dropped 24 catches across all formats since winning the T20 World Cup in March 2026. Across seven T20I matches against Ireland and England, the team dropped 11 catches. Their catching efficiency fell to 72.1 percent, placing them behind only Bangladesh and Ireland as the worst in international cricket over that stretch, according to InsideSport citing CricViz data.
The 5th T20I at Southampton on July 11 was the clearest example. Shivam Dube dropped Harry Brook on 3 in the sixth over, misjudging a high catch off a thick outside edge. Brook went on to score an unbeaten 95 off 45 balls, putting together a 233-run stand with Jos Buttler for the second wicket. England posted 257 for 3, the highest T20I total ever recorded against India. The series ended 4-0 to England, the reigning T20 World Cup champions unable to win a single completed match.
India’s fielding problems did not start in England. During the 2025 Test series there, India dropped 23 catches, their most in any series since ball-by-ball fielding data became available, as reported by ESPNcricinfo. Gavaskar had criticized India’s catching during that series too, saying he did not expect any fielding medal to be handed out by fielding coach T Dilip.
Gavaskar’s Wider Diagnosis: Boundaries, Batting, and Spin
The fielding demand was the sharpest part of a broader column. Gavaskar also called for bigger boundaries at Indian venues ahead of the 2027 ODI World Cup. He argued that small boundaries at Indian grounds flatter batters whose mishits clear the ropes at home but get caught on bigger grounds overseas.
He pointed to England’s spinners as a model. Gavaskar noted that Adil Rashid and Will Jacks bowled markedly slower through the air than their Indian counterparts and were far more effective for it. Larger boundaries, in his view, would encourage Indian spinners to flight the ball rather than push it through flat.
On batting, Gavaskar urged India’s players to check their egos and read situations more carefully. He argued that the ODI format gives batters a brief settling period before the power game and that smart cricket means identifying which bowlers to respect and which to attack.
Captain Shreyas Iyer himself acknowledged the problem after the 5th T20I.
“Fielding plays a key role in winning matches. This is one aspect we need to work on. Especially when you come in overseas conditions, the dimensions of the ground is completely different.”
Shreyas Iyer, post-match presentation, July 11, 2026
Iyer admitted that India could have been chasing 220-225 instead of 258 had they held their catches, and that his team was “dominated” by England in the fielding department throughout the tour.
Insider Read
Gavaskar’s line about hiding three or four players is not a figure of speech. It is the literal reality of captaincy when your team carries weak fielders.
When you set a field with a player you do not trust, you start your planning from a position of compromise. That fielder gets parked at fine leg or deep square, rotated from one quiet zone to the next depending on which end the bowling is happening from. The captain is not setting attacking fields. He is managing risk. Every over, part of your brain is tracking where the ball might go and whether it will find the one player you cannot rely on.
This is what makes fielding a bowler’s problem, not just a fielding problem. A bowler who beats the bat, finds the edge, and watches the catch go down does not just lose a wicket. He loses belief. When it happens twice in a spell, the bowler starts protecting himself. He bowls tighter, shorter, safer. The aggression drains. Catches win matches because without them, even the best spells produce nothing.
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In Indian cricket, the honest truth is that fielding rarely decides selection. A batter who averages 45 with the bat and is a liability in the field will get picked over someone who averages 35 and is electric in the outfield. Every selection meeting works this way. Fielding is discussed last, if at all. It is treated as something the fielding coach will fix after selection, not something selectors should weigh before it.
What Gavaskar is asking for is a shift in that thinking. Not a small one. He is saying fielding should be a disqualifier, not a bonus. At the international level, an “average” fielder is not someone who drops one catch in ten. It is someone whose movement is half a second late, whose throwing arm forces mid-on to move three steps sideways, whose body language under a high ball tells you the outcome before the ball arrives. You can spot this within two sessions of cricket. Selectors see it too. The question is whether they act on it.
India swept the Zimbabwe T20I series 3-0 under Shreyas Iyer just a day before Gavaskar’s column was published. Even in that clean sweep, match commentary noted “very ordinary fielding, including a slew of dropped catches.” India’s next assignment is a two-match Test series against Sri Lanka starting August 15 in Galle. Whether the selection approach changes before the 2027 ODI World Cup remains the central question Gavaskar’s column forces open.
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